1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a managing mechanism used in a communication network. In particular, the present invention relates to a method of managing a communication network, a communication management network system, a device usable in a communication management network system, and a network element connectable to an operations system portion of a communication management network system.
2. Related Prior Art
In the last years, an increasingly extension of communication networks, e.g. of wire based communication networks, such as the Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN), or wireless communication networks, such as the cdma2000 (code division multiple access) system, cellular 3rd generation communication networks like the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), the General Packet Radio System (GPRS), or other wireless communication system, such as the Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), took place all over the world. Various organizations, such as the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), 3rd Generation Partnership Project 2 (3GPP2), Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), and the like are working on standards for telecommunication network and multiple access environments.
In general, the system structure of a communication network is such that one party, e.g. a subscriber's user equipment, such as a mobile station, a mobile phone, a fixed phone, a personal computer (PC), a laptop, a personal digital assistant (PDA) or the like, is connected via transceivers and interfaces, such as an air interface, a wired interface or the like, to an access network subsystem. The access network subsystem controls the communication connection to and from the user equipment and is connected via an interface to a corresponding core or backbone network subsystem. The core (or backbone) network subsystem switches the data transmitted via the communication connection to a destination party, such as another user equipment, a service provider (server/proxy), or another communication network. It is to be noted that the core network subsystem may be connected to a plurality of access network subsystems. Depending on the used communication network, the actual network structure may vary, as known for those skilled in the art and defined in respective specifications, for example, for UMTS, GSM and the like.
Generally, for properly establishing and handling a communication connection between network elements such as the user equipment and another user terminal, a database, a server, etc., one or more intermediate network elements such as control network elements, support nodes or service nodes are involved.
With the size and sophistication of communication systems, such as telecommunication networks rapidly expanding, it becomes necessary to provide proper services to manage the communications. For example, services such as configuration, accounting, performance, security and the like are important elements of managing critical resources within large distributed telecommunications networks. For this purpose, in case of a telecommunication system, so-called telecommunication management network (TMN) concepts are used to manage several types of networks, such as high-speed fiber-optic networks to distributed cellular and satellite based wireless communication systems.
Within such a TMN, the management system consists of several types of components. These components includes, amongst others, an operations system (OS) or operations subsystem which monitors, coordinates and controls telecommunication functions, a data communication network, workstations providing a user the ability to monitor and interact with the network management system, network elements providing agent services, such as network communications equipment like a Radio Network Controller (RNC), proxy agents or the like. The OS provides management services that provide for the surveillance, monitoring and control of the managed network, interacting with components within the network to gather information and issue commands that may affect the behavior of the network. A network element may comprise one component, a group of components or a part of a telecommunication equipment being part of the telecommunication network.
TMN specifies a layered architecture for the management of telecommunication networks. The TMN is related to monitoring, control and coordination of resources in the network. Resources are components of a system which provides for services.
Management functions are divided into sub-components such as configuration management, fault management, performance management, accounting management and security management. These functions are provided by means of applications.
A network management architectures typically includes the use of two primary components, which are also called managers and agents. Managers provide a higher level perspective of system performance monitoring and controlling the behaviour of the managed devices. Agents are processes that reside at the managed device and can provide the managers with insight into the managed equipment status.
A manager can be connected to more than one agent. On the other hand, one agent can be connected to more than one manager. A manager and an agent communicate with each other by means of management protocols. These protocols may include, for example, common management information protocols (CMIP), simple network management protocols (SNMP) and the like.
The SNMP provides a set of services that allows SNMP managers to interact with SNMP agents that provide access to management information of the managed equipment (and/or software). This management information is represented by a construct called a Management Information Base (MIB) that is defined through a set of primitives. MIBs are constructed of individually addressable objects that can take a variety of forms depending on the managed application and the version of SNMP. The protocol itself provides a set of mechanisms for the managers and agents to exchange values of elements contained within a MIB.
In the case that a new network element (a new type or release/version of a network element) is to be connected to a telecommunication network, also a connection to the TMN is to be established in order to ensure that the network element can be managed by the operations system of the TMN. For such an “integration” of a new network element, in case the SNMP concept is used, SNMP MIB definitions written down in MIB files are downloaded by developers or system integration persons and the operations system is manually configured by using these MIB definition. An example for such MIB definition is given, for example, in “MIB Quick Reference for the Cisco ONS 15500 series”, Cisco Systems, Inc., 2001-2004, available by the Internet. An example for a configuration procedure is given, for example, in “Adding Cisco Traps to HPOV for Windows Traps Using a GUI”, document ID 13442, Cisco Systems, Inc., Jun. 11, 2002.
As mentioned above, in the environment of such a TMN, there can exist many types and releases or versions of network elements. Nevertheless, all these different network elements are to be connected to the operations system so that the management of the overall network is ensured.
However, connecting a new network element type or release to an operations system is a work-intensive process also requiring the work of a person such as the software developer or system integration persons or network operators. For example, specific information about the network element must be gathered and configured into the operations systems. Even with standard protocols such as 3GPP or SNMP, properties that are specific to the network element require manual work in the operations systems. For example, with SNMP MIB definitions, which are specific for a certain network element, information from the SNMP MIB definition has to be configured into the OS. This is time consuming and expensive and may also lead to errors in the adaptation of the operations system to the network element.
The properties requiring manual work may include, for example, but are not limited to, additional properties needed for the visualisation of the network element in the OS user interface, such as the provision of corresponding icons, description text and/or labels, limitations or extensions of the Operation and Maintenance (O&M) protocol implementation (so-called “Statement of Compliancy”), structure of the transferred configuration management data (managed object classes, attributes, containment hierarchy, inheritance tree, value constraints), structure and meaning of the transferred performance management data (measurement types, counter names and descriptive text), additional help texts for e.g. fault management events, adaptations to the generic OS applications, such as filtering rules, aggregation rules, correlation rules, rules for converting SNMP traps into faults, etc.